My dear delight, my Ursula, and where
Art thou departed, to what land, what sphere?
High o'er the heavens wert thou borne, to stand
One little cherub midst the cherub band?
Or dost thou laugh in Paradise, or now
Upon the Islands of the Blest art thou?
Or in his ferry o'er the gloomy water
Does Charon bear thee onward, little daughter?
And having drunken of forgetfulness
Art thou unwitting of my sore distress?
Or, casting off thy human, maiden veil,
Art thou enfeathered in some nightingale?
Or in grim Purgatory must thou stay
Until some tiniest stain be washed away?
Or hast returned again to where thou wert
Ere thou wast born to bring me heavy hurt?
Where'er thou art, ah! pity, comfort me;
And if not in thine own entirety,
Yet come before mine eyes a ...

The sweetest singer once thou wast, but art no more;
    An elf thou wast of what thou now shalt be,
Where thou art in realms of that celestial shore;
    There thou shalt sing through all eternity.
        We, peerless bard, bewail thy loss
            And shed heart-broken tears,
        Though meekly thou hast borne thy cross
            And winged the flight of years!

Thrice blessed singer, wrapped in heavenly bliss,
    Of earth's poor souls thy fortune who can tell?
Perchance thy splendid lot be solely this:
    To change thy lute with the angel Israfel!
        If so, then smite thy golden strings
            With fingers nimble, strong,
        Till all along fair heaven rings
            With cadence of thy song!

Thee tyrant earth once hel...

    The tree, with its leaves in luxuriance shading
        My path in the tune-yielding time of the year,
    Now sighs in its dirge, while its foliage, fading,
        Descends to its sepulchre withered and sere.

    And yet I regard it with feelings the fonder,
        With feelings of mingled compassion and pain,
    As in pity I gaze on its branches, and ponder
        Of once fragrant beauty what fragments remain.

    For that barren tree with adornment so fleeting,
        That blows in the autumn wind bleak and forlorn,
    Bespeaks the sad state of a heart that is beating,
        Bereft of the pleasures that once it has borne.

They are gone: all is still: Foolish heart, dost thou quiver?
Nothing moves on the lawn but the quick lilac shade.
Far up gleams the house, and beneath flows the river.
Here lean, my head, on this cool balustrade.

Ere he come: ere the boat, by the shining-branch’d border
Of dark elms come round, dropping down the proud stream;
Let me pause, let me strive, in myself find some order,
Ere their boat-music sound, ere their broider’d flags gleam.

Is it hope makes me linger? the dim thought, that sorrow
Means parting? that only in absence lies pain?
It was well with me once if I saw him: to-morrow
May bring one of the old happy moments again.

Last night we stood earnestly talking together
She enter’d, that moment his eyes turn’d from me.
Fasten’d on her dark...

DRINK, oh youth, joy's purest ray
From thy loved one's eyes all day,

And her image paint at night!
Better rule no lover knows,
Yet true rapture greater grows,

When far sever'd from her sight.

Powers eternal, distance, time,
Like the might of stars sublime,

Gently rock the blood to rest,
O'er my senses softness steals,
Yet my bosom lighter feels,

And I daily am more blest.

Though I can forget her ne'er,
Yet my mind is free from care,

I can calmly live and move;
Unperceived infatuation
Longing turns to adoration,

Turns to reverence my love.

Ne'er can cloud, however light,
Float in ether's regions bright,

When drawn upwards by the sun,
As my heart in rapturous calm.
Free fro...

In the night I dreamed that you had died,
    And I thought you lay in your winding sheet;
And I kneeled low by your coffin side,
    With my cheek on your heart that had ceased to beat.

And I thought as I looked on your form so still,
    A terrible woe, and an awful pain,
Fierce as vultures that slay and kill,
    Tore at my bosom and maddened my brain.

And then it seemed that the chill of death
    Over me there like a mantle fell,
And I knew by my fluttering, failing breath
    That the end was near, and all was well.

I woke from my dream in the black midnight -
    It was only a dream at worst or best -
But I lay and thought till the dawn of light,
    Had the dream been true we had both been blest.

Better to kneel by your still de...

I faint, I perish with my love! I grow
Frail as a cloud whose [splendours] pale
Under the evening's ever-changing glow:
I die like mist upon the gale,
And like a wave under the calm I fail.

        Let them bury your big eyes
        In the secret earth securely,
        Your thin fingers, and your fair,
        Soft, indefinite-colored hair,--
        All of these in some way, surely,
        From the secret earth shall rise;
        Not for these I sit and stare,
        Broken and bereft completely;
        Your young flesh that sat so neatly
        On your little bones will sweetly
        Blossom in the air.

        But your voice,--never the rushing
        Of a river underground,
        Not the rising of the wind
        In the trees before the rain,
        Not the woodcock's watery call,
        Not the note the white-throat utters,
        Not the feet of children pushing
        Yellow leaves along the gutters
  ...

Try to remember some details. Remember the clothing
of the one you love
so that on the day of loss you'll be able to say: last seen
wearing such-and-such, brown jacket, white hat.
Try to remember some details. For they have no face
and their soul is hidden and their crying is the same as their laughter,
and their silence and their shouting rise to one height
and their body temperature is between 98 and 104 degrees
and they have no life outside this narrow space
and they have no graven image, no likeness, no memory
and they have paper cups on the day of their rejoicing
and paper cups that are used once only.

Try to remember some details. For the world
is filled with people who were torn from their sleep with no one to mend the tear,
and unlike wild beasts they live...

Did pangs of grief for lenient time too keen,
Grief that devouring waves had caused, or guilt
Which they had witnessed, sway the man who built
This Homestead, placed where nothing could be seen,
Nought heard, of ocean troubled or serene?
A tired Ship-soldier on paternal land,
That o'er the channel holds august command,
The dwelling raised, a veteran Marine.
He, in disgust, turned from the neighbouring sea
To shun the memory of a listless life
That hung between two callings. May no strife
More hurtful here beset him, doomed though free,
Self-doomed, to worse inaction, till his eye
Shrink from the daily sight of earth and sky!

Obscurest night involved the sky,
The Atlantic billows roar’d,
When such a destined wretch as I,
Wash’d headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
His floating home for ever left.


No braver chief could Albion boast
Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion’s coast
With warmer wishes sent.
He loved them both, but both in vain,
Nor him beheld, nor her again.


Not long beneath the whelming brine,
Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
Or courage die away:
But waged with death a lasting strife,
Supported by despair of life.


He shouted; nor his friends had fail’d
To check the vessel’s course,
But so the furious blast prevail’d,
That, pitiless perforce,

Oh, unforgotten and only lover,
Many years have swept us apart,
But none of the long dividing seasons
Slay your memory in my heart.
In the clash and clamour of things unlovely
My thoughts drift back to the times that were,
When I, possessing thy pale perfection,
Kissed the eyes and caressed the hair.

Other passions and loves have drifted
Over this wandering, restless soul,
Rudderless, chartless, floating always
With some new current of chance control.
But thine image is clear in the whirling waters -
Ah, forgive - that I drag it there,
For it is so part of my very being
That where I wander it too must fare.

Ah, I have given thee strange companions,
To thee - so slender and chaste and cool -
But a white star loses no glimmer of beauty

Hand trembling towards hand; the amazing lights
Of heart and eye. They stood on supreme heights.

Ah, the delirious weeks of honeymoon!
Soon they returned, and after strange adventures,
Settled at Balham by the end of June,
Their money was in Can. Pacs. B. Debentures,
And in Antofagastas. Still he went
Cityward daily; still she did abide
At home. And both were really quite content
With work and social pleasures. Then they died.
They left three children (beside George, who drank);
The eldest Jane, who married Mr. Bell,
William, the head-clerk in the County Bank,
And Henry, a stock-broker, doing well.

A blight, a gloom, I know not what, has crept upon my gladness--
Some vague, remote ancestral touch of sorrow, or of madness;
A fear that is not fear, a pain that has not pain's insistence;
A sense of longing, or of loss, in some foregone existence;
A subtle hurt that never pen has writ nor tongue has spoken--
Such hurt perchance as Nature feels when a blossomed bough is broken.

The moon is full this winter night;
The stars are clear, though few;
And every window glistens bright
With leaves of frozen dew.

The sweet moon through your lattice gleams,
And lights your room like day;
And there you pass, in happy dreams,
The peaceful hours away!

While I, with effort hardly quelling
The anguish in my breast,
Wander about the silent dwelling,
And cannot think of rest.

The old clock in the gloomy hall
Ticks on, from hour to hour;
And every time its measured call
Seems lingering slow and slower:

And, oh, how slow that keen-eyed star
Has tracked the chilly gray!
What, watching yet! how very far
The morning lies away!

Without your chamber door I stand;
Love, are you slumbering still?
My ...

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more.

Fresh as the first beam glittering on a sail,
That brings our friends up from the underworld,
Sad as the last which reddens over one
That sinks with all we love below the verge;
So sad, so fresh, the days that are no more.

Ah, sad and strange as in dark summer dawns
The earliest pipe of half-awakened birds
To dying ears, when unto dying eyes
The casement slowly grows a glimmering square;
So sad, so strange, the days that are no more.

Dear as remembered kisses after death,
And sweet as those by hopeless fancy feigned
On lips th...

If hap it must, that I must see thee lie
Absyrtus-like, all torn confusedly:
With solemn tears, and with much grief of heart,
I'll recollect thee, weeping, part by part;
And having wash'd thee, close thee in a chest
With spice; that done, I'll leave thee to thy rest.

Lay him down where the fern is thick and fair.
Fain was he for life, here lies he low:
With the blood washed clean from his brow and his beautiful hair,
Lay him here in the dell where the orchids grow.

Let the birch-bark torches roar in the gloom,
And the trees crowd up in a quiet startled ring
So lone is the land that in this lonely room
Never before has breathed a human thing.

Cover him well in his canvas shroud, and the moss
Part and heap again on his quiet breast,
What recks he now of gain, or love, or loss
Who for love gained rest?

While she who caused it all hides her insolent eyes
Or braids her hair with the ribbons of lust and of lies,
And he who did the deed fares out like a hunted beast
To lurk where the musk-ox tramples the barren groun...